For every film completed, dozens of potential films fall by the wayside and never make it onto the big screen. In the VR experience Missing Pictures, Abel Ferrara, Tsai Ming-liang, Catherine Hardwicke, Naomi Kawase, and Lee Myung-Se give us a guided tour of a story they were not able to tell.

A contemplative trip down memory lane with one of the leading voices of the Second New Wave of Taiwanese Cinema. Saw Tiong Guan clearly established a very personal bond with his subject, and also found many of Tsai Ming-liang’s colleagues prepared to complete this portrait of a quiet yet outspoken artist.

A behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of Ming-liang Tsai’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone.

A leading figure of the "Second New Wave" of Taiwanese cinema, award-winning Director Tsai Ming-Liang has left his mark on the art world with his minimalist dialogues, contemplative fixed shots, and unmistakable depictions of urban settings. But what's left to achieve when most of your dreams have come true? Exclusively for TaiwanPlus, Tsai, who promised himself not to make more than ten feature films - but already has eleven to his credit - discusses the origins of his art and the future of his cinematographic commitment.

This short by Tsai Ming-liang, completed in 2021, was filmed at "the Dune" in Yilan, Taiwan, where the eight films in his Walker series were being shown.

An exploration of Chinese cinema and its relationships with gender and sexuality, which the film argues has been more frankly and provocatively explored than in any other national cinema. Utilizing both film excerpts and interviews with many leading directors and academics, the film examines topics such as male bonding in kung fu movies, depictions of same-sex bonding and physical intimacy, the emphasis on women's grievances in melodramas, and the career of Yam Kim-Fai, a Hong Kong actress who spent her life portraying men on and off the screen.

"For reasons of health, Lee Kang-sheng and I moved to the mountains. We don't have any neighbors. Our house is part of a row of dilapidated houses. I love these abandoned houses. I often walk around in them casually. I think they are beautiful. I said to Lee Kang-sheng: we don't have to go elsewhere to make films anymore. I'll make all my remaining films right here. I got some old chairs and some of my paintings and arranged them in these abandoned houses. And thus, this film was made." Tsai Ming-liang

An audio-visual collage of New York City juxtaposed with a Washington seaside. Featuring words from director Tsai Ming-liang.

Taipei 24H divides 24 hours in Taipei into 8 shorts. It opens with Cheng Fen-fen's upbeat and comedic "Share the Morning", and ends with Lee Kang-sheng running the final leg of this relay with "Remembrance" at 4am. Well-known director Tsai Ming-liang makes a rare appearance visiting a late night coffee shop. Taipei 24H is a contemporary urban chronicle of a city rarely at sleep.

With Taiwan remaining in the grip of martial law in 1982, a group of filmmakers from that country set out to establish a cultural identity through cinema and to share it with the world. This engaging documentary looks at the movement's legacy.

Lush jungle and a building in ruins are the ideal stage for a film-confession that defies storytelling and goes beyond conversation on cinema. Tsai Ming-Liang and his actor Lee Kang-sheng confess and put on stage a pièce in which attention and slowness are in tune with the rhythm of memory. The unveiling of Tsai Ming-liang’s filmmaking: from Stray Dogs to the most intimate notes of the director-actor relationship.

French Cinema Mon Amour is an ensemble film in which each contributor brings their own voice, their own particular approach, their culture, and their language to produce a portrait of French cinema.

The title of the François Lunel film is the Buddhist proverb concluding by: "all is but illusion". His movie draws the Tsai Ming-Liang's face during the shooting of his movie Visage, which itself is also a movie within a movie.

Richly illustrated with film clips and interviews, OUR TIME, OUR STORY tells the still-evolving story of the Taiwanese "new wave," from its rise in the early 1980s, as the island was democratizing after decades under martial law, through growing international recognition and domestic debate in the 1990s. Spearheaded in its early years by such filmmakers as Edward Yang, Ko I-cheng, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Wan Jen, the movement revitalized Taiwan cinema through low-budget experiments that emphasized personal stories, political reflection and stylistic invention. Said filmmakers, writers and actors like Wu Nien-jen and Sylvia Chang, even "second wave" directors Tsai Ming-liang and Lin Cheng-sheng provide fond reminiscences and retrospective insights in this compelling account of one of the most distinctive national cinemas of the last quarter-century.

Tsai Ming-liang designed this short film as a farewell to his friend Simon Field, who was about to leave his position as director of the Rotterdam Festival after eight years in office. The piece follows two dogs roaming the Tamshui River in Taipei, accompanied by the director's voice-over as he reads a written dedication for Field.

Composed of a series of portrait shots of mostly anonymous individuals, filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang's digital experiment turns the human face into a subject of dramatic intrigue.

Tsai interrupted his pre-production for The River to make this pioneering documentary for Taiwan's nascent AIDS-awareness campaign. Ignoring instructions to 'play down the gay angle', he centres the film on his own very candid conversations with two HIV+ young men. Sadly the identities of the interviewees have to be concealed, and so the freewheeling camerawork focuses most often on Tsai himself; but the sense of rapport between the director and his 'new friends' is palpable and very moving, even to Western viewers already only too familiar with these issues.

Six authorities of cinema describe their approach to transcendence, mysticism, spirituality and life after dead.

Human shortcomings in the pursuit of an idol. Two film school students travel to interview Taiwanese film director Tsai Ming-liang and actor Lee Kang-sheng in Oslo.

Hsiao-Kang, a Taiwanese film director, travels to the Louvre in Paris, France, to shoot a film that explores the Salomé myth.

A portrait of the legendary actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, icon of the French New Wave and closely linked to the work of François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Goddard.

Free interpretation of the myth. Tsai Ming-liang propels a woman neglected by her lover in the mob of the bus station of Kuala Lumpur.

A street vendor with a grim home-life forges a connection with a young woman on her way to Paris.

Three lonely young denizens of Taipei unknowingly share an apartment: May, a real estate agent who uses it for her sexual affairs; Ah-jung, her current lover; and Hsiao-kang, who's stolen the key and uses the apartment as a retreat.

Rawang, an immigrant from Bangladesh living in awful conditions, takes pity on a Chinese man, Hsiao-kang, who is beaten up and left in the street. Rawang lovingly nurses him on a mattress he found. When he is almost healed, Hsiao-kang meets the waitress Chyi. His love for Rawang is put to the test.

Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.

Hsiao-Kang, now working as an adult movie actor, meets Shiang-chyi once again. Meanwhile, the city of Taipei faces a water shortage that makes the sales of watermelons skyrocket.

A grandmother is looking for her grandson, a teenager for his grandfather.

In the final days of the year 1999, almost everyone in Taiwan has died from a strange plague that ravished the island. As rain pours down relentlessly, a single man is stuck with an unfinished plumbing job and a hole in his floor. This results in a very odd relationship with the woman who lives below him.

A young man develops severe neck pain after swimming in a polluted river for a movie shoot, but nobody can provide him any relief.

On a dark and rainy night, a historic and regal Taipei cinema sees its final film: 1967 martial arts feature "Dragon Inn". As the film plays, the lives of the theater's various employees and patrons intersect, and two ghostly actors arrive to mourn the passing of an era.

Defying his parents, disaffected youth Hsiao Kang drops out of the local cram school to head for the bright lights of downtown Taipei. He meets Ah Tze, a young hoodlum, and their relationship is a confused mixture of hero-worship and rivalry that soon leads to trouble.

The whole story revolves around a woman from marriage, marriage to divorce encounter sexual problems as the main axis, reflecting the Taiwan society in this regard subjective and objective taboos. The first paragraph of the description of the actress Xiao Xiaomin arranged with the parents of the scholar if strong engagement after the agreement with the high school students often travel, and finally cancel the engagement. The second paragraph to write her marriage in order to fight for a wounded into her young Wu Dawei testify to her husband's misunderstanding, but also the end of the divorce. The third paragraph to write her commitment to kindergarten education work to recognize the disabled young boy odd, she did not dare to face the problem of love, but the other's cheerful outlook touched her.

In order to recreate a photograph, two actors undergo a transformation.

A collection of shorts by four East Asian directors: Ann Hui on a male-to-female sex change, Kim Tae-yong on an emotional imposture, Gu Changwei on pregnancy in China and Tsai Ming-Liang on time and the city of Hong Kong.

The original subject intended for this film was a spiritual medium who was unbelievably accurate. Tsai Ming-liang jumped on his 50cc motorbike, equipped with a DV camera ready to shoot her, to see whether the god would speak to his camera. But on the way, he was caught in a traffic jam of people gathered at another god’s festival. A man in a trance, flashy karaoke girls on stage, a power black-out. During his diversion, the camera discovers fish and underground passages

A metaphor for mourning as much as it is a reminder to slow down, Tsai Ming-liang's stunningly beautiful Walker features his acteur fétiche Lee Kang-Sheng as a red-robed monk barely locomoting through the bustling streets of Hong Kong.

An alcoholic man and his two young children barely survive in Taipei. They cross paths with a lonely grocery clerk who might help them make a better life.

A young woman wandering around meets a young man going to a casting call for a pornographic film.

In 2011, Tsai Ming-Liang staged a play, "Only You", for Taiwan's National Theater and Concert Hall. In it, there was a powerfully moving scene where monk Xuanzang walked at an extremely slow pace for half an hour. Lamenting the transient nature of theater, Tsai decided to make a movie out of this slow-walking performance, "No Form", the first of his "Walker Films" series.

In 2019, the night in Hong Kong was still in fascinating beauty and the landscape of everyday life was gradually changing. Travelling the streets, Tsai Ming-liang documented the city's rhythm and ambience, along with an overpass.

Six filmmakers present six short films about the experiences of Chinese immigrants. Shot across Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Myanmar, the anthology depicts the crisis of identity that accompanies international migration.

In 2014, Tsai Ming-Liang was invited to make a film for the MarseilleFID, Marseille International Film Festival. Since he was not familiar with Marseille, he decided to make a film as tourist, capturing the beautiful Mediterranean sunshine in the late summer of that year. He also invited famous French actor, Denis Lavant, to appear alongside Lee Kang-Sheng playing Xuanzang. "Journey to the West" was invited to be the opening short film at the Berlin International Film Festival the same year.

Segment of the feature Welcome to São Paulo (2004), produced by São Paulo International Film Festival.

Follows the lives of two big stars in Taiwan. Since a failed spine surgery 40 years ago, Lee Pei-jing, known as the “Moon singer”, has been confined to a wheelchair. Actor Chang Feng is reaching one hundred years old. Tsai describes Chang as a tree, which looks ever more beautiful as it grows old.

All the feature is given prestige to by the narration in Caetano Veloso's voice, that also signs one of the segments of the project. São Paulo is the largest city of the Southern Hemisphere, with an incessant dynamics of cultural mixtures, with immigrants of all the world and migrants of all parts of Brazil. The gathering of these peculiarities are seen through the 13 film directors's sensibilities and their segments.

In 2018, Tsai Ming-Liang was invited by the Northeast and Yilan Coast National Scenic Area Administration to make this film, his eighth in the "Walker" series. In the constant passage of time, the Zen-like footsteps of the Walker has finally allowed us to see the Pacific Ocean, the open sky, the seagulls, the black sand, an eel catching settlement that arose in the cold winter rain, the twisting branches of the lintou trees, flotsam piled up like mountains, and a newly constructed cement house, which seems to offer a temporary place of rest for the Walker. "Sand" premiered together with the opening of the Zhuangwei Dune Visitor Center.

A junior-high student bullies and blackmails a younger boy, then receives the same treatment at the hands of some older students.

In the wee hours of winter a night train travels through a sleepless city. This is a panorama of a Buddhist monk's journey through Tokyo at night. He also stops at a bath-house in a capsule hotel, where he makes a brief encounter.

In 2013, Tsai Ming-Liang was invited by Malaysian filmmaker Tan Chui Mui to make a short film for an anthology film, "Letters from the South". Tsai Ming-Liang returned to his hometown in Kuching, Malaysia and made a "Walker" film at his childhood home, "Walking on Water". The seven-storey flat which contained the happy memories of his childhood is now occupied by strangers. His old neighbour, an older girl who used to bathe and feed him when he was a child, has also grown old.

Tsai Ming-liang directed in 2001 this episode of the popular Taiwanese TV children show Fruit Pie (《水果冰淇淋》), although it rarely appears on Tsai’s filmographies and the director himself is not particularly proud of it - it was a command by the PBS, perhaps only a divertimento. However, we find in it lots of elements of Tsai´s universe, including Lee Kang-sheng playing the dog which eats the moon. Note how the title (《月亮不見了》) echoes that of the short film The Skywalk is Gone (《天橋不見了》), shot a year later. The story is set during the Moon Festival, with many references to this festivity and its mythology.

Viennale-Trailer 2015: Two-minute homage to Lee Kang-sheng, Xiao Kang.

A continuation of Tsai Ming-Liang's Walker series, featuring Lee Kang-Sheng as a barefoot monk who walks very slowly.

In 2012, Taiwanese architects Michael Lin and Liao Wei-li invited Tsai Ming-Liang to create moving visuals for their exhibit at the Venise Architecture Biennale. Using the space at their preview exhibition in Taiwan, Tsai Ming-Liang made two short films, "Sleepwalk" and "Diamond Sutra", using the "Walker" concept. "Diamond Sutra" was later selected to be the opening short film for the Venise Film Festival. Tsai-Ming Liang said that gazing at the steam rising from a rice cooker reminded him of his mother's face as she laid dying, exhaling her final breath.

The walker with the shaved head and dressed in a red robe is barefoot. He walks slowly but determinedly through the forest, over stones and grassland. He also makes his way through the shadows of trees and houses. He sets foot in the train station, the church and the museum. The sun rises and sets again. The walker passes through Washington, D.C. Another stranger is also on the move in the city. We are unsure whether or not he is following the walker.

Kidnapped by a group of bandits and raped by their chief, Dan Zhu slowly develops feelings for the perpetrator. Echoing the social realism of Taiwanese new wave filmmaking, director Wang Tung revisits the wuxia genre, with the emphasis on psychology rather than action.

The ninth opus of his Walker Films series, which was shot at Centre Pompidou.

The Xining Public Housing complex in Taipei, built in 1983, houses more than 1,000 residents. Tsai Ming-liang filmed his first television drama and his feature The Hole (1998) here. Tsai Ming-liang quietly observes the complex, set to be demolished soon, and the daily lives of its people.

Three siblings idle their time while their parents are away. Youngest son, Hsiao-hung, finds a young fugitive taking refuge in their empty home, and hides him. Later, his mother finds the murderer sleeping in a cupboard – and a night of horror takes hold.

Drama about a young boy who suffers from a rare deficiency disease. The medicine he has to take every day has the side effect of making him reek of ammonia. The consequent bullying and ostracism by schoolmates exacerbates the boy's sense of victimhood. His mother, meanwhile, runs a help-line for parents with comparable problems.

Having lost all his money in the stock market, a depressed man falls in love with a woman over a suicide helpline.

Zang Guang-xing is a veteran soldier from Mainland China who married a young Taiwanese woman. He has been working as a supervisor in a construction company for seven years. Everyday he rides the same motorbike to work. He suffers enough misery from riding that motorbike, and dreams of buying a car. So he asks around for decent second-hand cars. His son doesn't like any car he chooses. His wife, a typical Taiwanese woman who lives frugally, shaves any penny she can. She is the one who pays for the family's new car. They go out on trips happily, and become the envy of the neighborhood. Zhang thus gets the new car he's always dreamed of, but he starts to worry about it getting dirty, because it's simply too new, too nice for him. The car thus becomes his son's vehicle. He rides the old bike to work again, just like he has during all these years.

A documentary about Nogami Teruyo, who for nearly half a century stood by Akira Kurosawa as a screenwriting collaborator, a script supervisor, and a companion.

Ximending was once the trendiest area in Taipei, and it's also where Kang-sheng Lee's first film was shot. Twenty years ago, director Ming-liang Tsai asked Lee if he wanted to be in his film, and Lee's answer changed the course of his own life forever. Now Lee returns to where his career began to shoot a film about himself.

Experimental short film directed by Tsai-Ming Liang for fashion designer Johan Ku’s 2011-2012 collection, where a woman wanders through the underground corridors and underworld of Taipei.

Tsai Ming-Liang, the artisan of cinematography approaches virtual reality, pushing the boundaries of VR film. The Deserted stripped away traditional film techniques and is presented in 360 degrees, like a theatre. The viewer is placed in the scene and is allowed to look freely at the construction of the environment. And immersed in the handcraft of the scenes.

This sociological drama focuses on a construction worker’s family who cannot afford a house of their own, even though the head of the family builds houses.

Tsai Ming-liang has been living in an abandoned house in the mountains since 2014. Around the same time, his persona, actor Lee Kang-sheng, wanted to quit acting due to severe spinal pains. Tsai decided to capture Lee Kang-sheng's face as well as the home, skies, trees, and abandoned ruins that surround him.

"The very first Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival was held here at Zhongshan Hall. During my university days, I volunteered as a ticket seller in order to watch films for free. Many years later, I received the top award at the Taipei Film Festival in an award ceremony held here as well. I have also run a coffeehouse here and often held small screenings of classic films during that time. Last year, I shot my film, Your Face, inside Guangfu Auditorium. The film was composed of thirteen big close-ups. Each of those thirteen faces was filled with the passage of time. Now, I am given a chance to film Zhongshan Hall again. I switched off all the lights and allowed the warm winter sun to shine on her face."

A quiet story that follows the development of a love affair between an unmarried factory worker and the widowed factory manager.

Kang lives alone in a big house, Non in a small apartment in town. They meet, and then part, their days flowing on as before.

Mr and Mrs Chang live in Taipei's Hsi-Men-Ding (the city's entertainment/red light/nightlife district) with their teenaged kids. The parents work as cleaners in a "love hotel" and send the kids out to work as ticket scalpers, block-buying seats for hit movies like A City of Sadness and reselling them at a profit. Tragedy strikes when the daughter Mei-Hsueh flirts with the idea of prostituting herself and changes her mind at the last moment, leaving her first client with injuries that put him on the critical list. The focus throughout is on the son Ah Tong, who has a latent talent as a writer that is never going to flower.

A dying forest flared up and the flavor of damp ruin, settled in on the tongue: Tsai Ming Liang created an entirely novel artwork with his tenth feature film 'Stray Dogs' at the Museum MoNTUE. Moving images eclipsed, in slivers and swathes, by immovable shadows of deadwood. Waking, sleep and everything in between proved indistinguishable. This documentary recreates elements of existential banality (on view) and guides focus inward. It establishes a firm, if converse, analog between cinema and consciousness: an interplay of movie (and its constituent elements of light, shadow and audience) mirrored in consciousness (and its building blocks of waking, sleep and dream) if you will.

According to Tsai, “I chose to film Yilan’s Nanguan Market, the breakfast store next to the city god temple, the clay oven roll shop on Fuxing Road, and the mountains, water and paddy fields. To me, these are part of the architects’ everyday life. What makes Fieldoffice Architects precious is that they never do their work behind closed doors. Instead, their works are deeply guided by Yilan’s landscape and local customs, and are informed by their passion and love as artists.”

At that time, we sat on the first floor of the Social Welfare Hall, eating the Lao Wu charcoal grilled salty crispy cakes brought by Wenrui from Fuxing Road, Yilan, and looking at the sparse crowds of people on Tongqing Street, the trees swaying in the wind, and the Yilan River flowing not far away. Tsai Ming-liang said: "Sheng-Yuan tells me that apart from the buildings in the middle of the field providing shelter from the wind and rain and living functions, he also hoped that the people inside would look out and see the mountains, the water, the trees, the weeds, the rice paddies, the gullies, and the flying birds that we have. Let's stroll around and see how happy we are.”

In the City of Saints, a woman's prayer gets painted and a failed cinematographer soothes his bitterness by uploading his recordings of film screenings for pay.